


The Sallow Place

by aMillyOrates



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fairy Tale Elements, Friends to Lovers, Halloween story, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-06 18:19:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12216321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aMillyOrates/pseuds/aMillyOrates
Summary: On November first, when Steven Grant Rogers was fifteen years old, he found himself in the garden of a witch.





	1. A Cat, a Witch, a Scarecrow

On November first, when Steven Grant Rogers was fifteen years old, he found himself in the garden of a witch.

Unfortunately, he was not dressed for a great first impression. He had been on his way home from school, jacket turned up against the cold bite of Brooklyn in the fall, when he'd heard an uncanny yowl, followed by a volley of jeers, from around the corner.

"Get it in that box," he'd heard over the wind. "Cal, get your lighter!"

It was Tommy Callaghan and three other boys from his class, backs to Steve and surrounding a large black cat cornered in an alley off Portland Ave. The cat itself was enormous - Steve would have thought it a dog if not for its bottle-brush tail and the furious arch of its back. Suddenly, one of the boys had snatched and thrown a can from the ground. She'd yowled, and her almond-shaped green eyes had glared at Steve around the other boys.

Without thought, Steve had darted forward and kicked the tallest boy between the legs like his mother had taught him, scooped up the cat, and bolted.

"What the -!"

Steve’d run for the park. Fort Greene was just two blocks down, and it’d be bustling with people on their way home for the evening. He knew from his own experience that Tommy's gang would be less inclined to violence in front of witnesses.

The cat was huge, and Steve was short for his age; he had to lean back just to clear her paws from the ground. He’d tripped over the cat’s tail, and she had hissed and bit at his hand. “ _Ow!_ ” he’d cursed, panting with adrenaline. “I’m trying to help you, here!” Strangely, she had felt lighter after that, and had even graciously curled her tail up and out of the way in front of her belly.

Small, and often sick besides, Steve had already felt the pain of running in his legs before a rock glanced off his knee with a throbbing bite. Tommy and his friends had caught up.

“You’re dead, Rogers!” one of them’d shouted, and another rock had cut Steve’s ear. The cat yowled with outrage. Just ahead, a row of hedges lined the park, their branches sharp and bare. It would hurt, Steve had known, but still he had curled around the cat and barreled straight through.  

And that was the state he was in - jacket ripped and stained, blond hair stuck up in tufts, hand bleeding - when he first arrived at the witch's garden.

Braced as he'd been for the bushes, Steve stumbled in surprise when he passed through unhindered, as if the hedge had unwound itself around him - or perhaps he'd simply knocked his head and was dreaming, because the place he was in was no Brooklyn he knew.

For one, it was warm, honey-yellow. From his vantage point at the top of the hill (his stomach swooped with vertigo) Steve could see a wide field of corn, uninterrupted save for a one-armed scarecrow leaning on a pole. The field was so bright it almost hurt Steve's eyes to look at, and the stalks stretched at least a mile before stopping suddenly, as if against a wall. Beyond that was solid, pitch-black darkness.

Steve couldn't see a single building, couldn't hear a single car. A beetle buzzed his ear, and he yelped, and a dismayed voice to his left called out:

"Oh, you bad cat." With a jolt, Steve turned, and where the streets of Brooklyn should have been was instead a small cottage covered in vines. On its porch stood a balding man all in brown - from his eyes to his skin to his smart suit and hat.

The cat sagged in Steve's arms with a grumbling mrrrowl, and Steve felt himself begin to panic.

"Um," he said, prompting the man to look up at him.

"I will deal with you in just a moment, please" said the man, voice thick with exhaustion and a heavy German accent. Again, he addressed the cat: "I have told you not to go out past the hedge."

Still slouched in Steve's arms, the cat made a noise like an oncoming thundercloud. The man rolled his eyes.

"What do I care how delicious the medovnik is? Rather, how do I know? I do not, because you never bring any back for me. This is not kind, Hackelsburg. And what have you brought instead? A little boy!" Steve wanted to protest that he was fifteen, hardly a little kid anymore, but his mother had always taught him it was rude to interrupt...and he supposed the rule stood, even if the conversation were between a strange old man and a cat. "Is the boy to be company, for the scarecrow, perhaps?" The man heaved a great sigh. "And you are late, besides. Off to your post. Go on! Get!"

Growling in a manner that reminded Steve of how he felt whenever his mother sent him to his room, the cat poured like water out of Steve's arms. Back on all fours, she was altogether the size of an English Bulldog. She shook herself, licked a front paw, weaved between Steve’s legs like a goodbye, and stalked out of the yard with dignity.

As she ran down the hill, Steve could hardly believe he'd been able to pick her up. She was so large that the stalks of corn rustled as she went, marking her path towards the pole holding up the scarecrow.

Then, to Steve's shock, the scarecrow moved, bending down as if listening to what the cat had to say before throwing its arm up in exasperation.

"What." Steve must be dreaming. He rubbed his eyes. Tommy's gang must have caught him, and he was in a coma, asleep in his bed and dreaming like Dorothy of strange worlds and scarecrows. He twisted the skin at his elbow, wincing at the pinch.

"Or maybe I'm just insane?" he thought with growing panic.

"And now to deal with you." The man sat on the steps of his porch, rubbing stained hands over his face. "You have caught me at a very hard time, Steven. I have just put on a draught that I cannot leave unattended. Will you wait, perhaps an hour, until it is done? I can then take you home."

"Oh. No. Uh, thanks." Steve didn't know where he was, or who this man was, or how he knew Steve's name, but he didn't intend to stick around long enough to find out. He backed away, eyes wide when the scarecrow started to climb the hill toward them. "I'll just...see myself out."

But when he turned, the hedge wasn't there.

"I'm afraid it does not work like that," the man said apologetically, suddenly holding a thermos and a basket of food. "You had to be shown in, you must be shown out. My name is Abraham Erskine, and I promise you are safe here, but I truly must get back to work. Here, sit. James will keep you company."

Then he vanished, literally disappeared into the air, leaving Steve panicked in a strange, beautiful garden holding a hot cup of what smelled like cider and a basket of pies.

"What?" Steve said aloud dumbly. He looked down at his hands - surely this was a dream - and looked around again for the man, and saw again how truly _bizarre_ this place was.

For one, there were bugs, everywhere, and they were huge. Spiders bigger than his fist hung in webs that draped like lace over the fence. Next to him, a snake-sized centipede inched up the trunk of a green- and gold-leafed tree; only, no, those weren't leaves, but the wings of a swarm of butterflies resting in the branches.

All around him the grass rustled noisily, beetles glinting like jewels between the blades. They were large and vibrant, but also slow, as if they had never known the need to hide from curious little boys. A noise like static hummed lowly in the air: no shouting children or honking horns, only the buzzing of overlarge bees and a gathering of translucent orbs floating above him like dandelion puffs.

" _What_?"

"That's what I said." The scarecrow had reached the fence, only it was now a boy, around Steve's age. Where before Steve could have sworn were a thatch of twigs, now grew dark and wavy hair that fell into blue eyes sharp with a suspicious frown. The boy was covered in straw, had only one arm, and - like the rest of this place - was uncannily beautiful. "Where’d Hackel find you? You get taken or somethin’?" the boy asked with an angry frown.

This was the last straw.

"I don't," Steve tried, voice high and shaking along with his hands. Had Steven Grant Rogers not been made of such stern stuff, he would have given into the urge to burst into confused, scared tears. The scarecrow boy's frown turned to concern. "I, um," Steve swallowed heavily. "I don't know where I am?" Something of his fear must have shown in his face, if his voice hadn't given it away, because the scarecrow boy clambered over the fence and took Steve's elbow gently.

"Hey, you’re okay, kid" he said soothingly, guiding Steve with a warm hand to sit on the porch. "Nothing bad's gonna happen to you. Here, drink this." The mug of cider was held to his lips. "Go on. It's good."

Steve drank, and a soothing warmth spread through his entire body. It tasted like the first day of fall, like the first crisp breeze that turned the leaves in Prospect Park. He felt as if somebody had wrapped him in a warm quilt. Between sips, Steve gradually stopped shaking long enough to glare up at the scarecrow. "I'm not a kid," he said, flushed from the cider and from having made a scene.

The other boy laughed. "Sure you ain't," he said in a Brooklyn drawl that Steve was fiercely glad to recognize. "A tiny old geezer, then?"

Steve frowned. "I'm fifteen years old!"

"No kidding?" The scarecrow smiled. "Me too, I think. I'm Bucky Barnes," he said, holding out his hand. "Hackel tells me your name is Steven?"

"Steve." He shook Bucky's hand. "Steve Rogers. Hackel?"

"The cat. Well, officially, she's a pain in the ass," Bucky said with a wink. "Her full name is Hackelsburg. Don't ask. I didn't name 'er. She tells me you're something of a hero, huh?"

“The cat. Told you.”

“Sounded awful brave. Four against one? You’re either a hero or an idiot.”

Scratched up, covered in fur and grass, and lost, Steve assumed he didn’t look very heroic. "Where are we?" he asked, feeling unhinged. "The man who lives here...he just disappeared."

"Erskine? He does that. He's magic."

Magic.

"Magic." Steve repeated, flat.

"Magic," Bucky confirmed, almost chipper, peeking into the basket. "Oooo pies. Mind if I have one?” Steve stared, and Bucky grabbed a pot pie from the basket. “Thanks. Yeah, Erskine is the watcher witch. He's a good guy. He'll get you home safe."

A witch. "I'm going crazy." A brood of what looked like several hairy chickens scampered around the corner of the house. They were at least three-feet tall. "I'm having a hallucination." His voice went high again with panic.

"Aw, no, it's really okay, I promise." Bucky put his hand on Steve's, grounding, and despite the fact that Steve was far too old to be holding hands with anybody unless he was making time, nevermind with a boy, it settled him somewhat. "It's like this," Bucky went on. "You're in what they call the Bright Place. It's the first stop before the Otherworld. I remember, my ma always called it the Fairy World, in her stories. You're real lucky! Not a lot of people see it nowadays! Hackel must've thought you were a good one, to let you through."

"Fairies," Steve said flatly. But Bucky didn't grin, didn't give up the ruse, only nodded and bit into a pot pie, watching Steve out of the corner of his eye.

Steve felt his ire building. "Fairies," he bit. What kind of joke was this? Did Bucky think Steve was a baby? "Really!"

"Really!"

“Magic!”

“Yeah!”

"Prove it, then!" Steve snapped then yelped as all at once, the porch fell away.

Or rather, Steve rose up, floating into the air like a lost balloon. He shouted and grabbed at the nearest thing, which turned out to be Bucky's hair, bringing the other boy along with him.

"What!" Steve screamed, hovering six feet in the air. "What?!"

Bucky grabbed at his hand. "Let go!"

Then, just as sudden as it had begun, Steve was floating back down to the porch steps, still holding on loosely to Bucky's hair. The moment he landed, he released Bucky and grabbed at his own jacket, looking for wires or rope or something that could explain how he'd just flown up into the air.

Nothing.

"Oh my god," Steve whispered, heart racing almost as fast as his mind. Magic?

"You made me drop my breakfast." Bucky ran his hand over his hair and looked mournfully where a giant bee was investigating the spilled pie.

Steve stared at Bucky.

Bucky looked at Steve.

There was silence for a moment, and then they burst into laughter.

"Oh my god!" Steve gulped for air, voice cracking. "Magic!"

Bucky was giggling. "You should have seen your face!"  

"You're magic!" Steve went on, as if Bucky wasn't aware of the fact. He looked around, seeing the giant insects and floating lights in a new lens. A _magic place_ . He could barely believe it. He _had to be_ dreaming, though he found himself suddenly wishing he weren't.

"I'm not magic," Bucky sniffed, straightening out his plaid shirt and picking off straw here and there. He was a bit finicky, Steve thought, and he kept looking at Steve with bright eyes, like he was excited but trying not to show it. "I'm just a human."

"But you made me fly, just now!"

"Nah, that was the vedi." Bucky pointed at the tree alongside the house. "She's got plenty of magic." The tree shook its branches in a wave - several of the butterflies fell off and flitted away, annoyed.

"Oh." Steve didn't know the proper manners for meeting trees. "Uhm, hi. I’m Steve. Rogers.” Bucky made a noise like he was hiding a laugh. “Uhm. Nice to meet you,” Steve said, looking at the tree merrily wave its branches.

A sudden breeze ruffled through Steve's hair in response.

He looked at Bucky again, feeling his eyes wide as dinner plates. "The tree is magic," he told him faintly,then: ""Where _are_ we? I was just in New York." He thought vaguely of his reading, waiting for him at home on the kitchen table, and almost got so far as to worry about school in the morning before it sunk in again that this place was _magic_. Homework could wait.   

"Technically," Bucky fished another pie from the basket and handed it over to Steve, "you're still in New York. This is just a place Between. There's doors all over the place that lead here, but most people can't use 'em. Hackel got you in. That's how you managed. She said you rescued her from a pack of bullies."

Steve flushed again. Bucky really was a very beautiful person, and Steve'd only just come to terms with the fact that he liked looking at boys just as much as he liked looking at girls. He still wasn't quite used to thinking it.  

He certainly wasn't used to thinking _magic boys_ in _fairy worlds_ were nice to look at. Still, Bucky was unarguably pretty, especially with his eyes shining with admiration, possibly thinking of Steve heroically fighting off Tommy's gang. Steve didn't have the heart to admit that all he'd done was kick a boy between the legs and run.

"I'm just surprised I could pick her up," he confessed before looking to change the subject. Reaching out, he grabbed a wayward piece of straw from Bucky's shoulder. "Are you a scarecrow?" he asked, holding it up between them as evidence. He felt now that nothing could surprise him.

Still, it was something of a shock when Bucky laughed. "Sometimes!" he said. "It's a spell of Erskine's. Somebody's gotta keep the crows away from the field, and it's good to have something to do. Hackel's got the job covered now, though."

Steve shuffled closer, eager to see more magic. "Can you show me? You being a scarecrow." Bucky blinked at him and turned a little red around the ears.

"N-nah. I'm not magic. I gotta have Erskine's help for it. But," he cast around the garden for inspiration. "He's got a few spells around the yard we can poke at. Wanna see?"

"Yeah!"

Steve didn't know how much time passed while Bucky showed him the magic of the garden - the fence that repaired itself no matter how far you flung away the poles, the bees that walked on the boys' arms and left glowing fire on their skin. He helped Steve talk to the vedi. With some persuasion, she lowered her branches to pick the two boys up high above the cottage. Steve clung to her trunk tightly, and felt a vibration of laughter pass from the tree to him.

A magic tree.

"If you don't blink eventually, your face is gonna get stuck like that," Bucky teased. Steve snapped his mouth shut, but couldn't quite scold his face into neutrality.

"It's a magic tree," he told Bucky, and he felt the tree laugh again, though she shook with disapproval when Bucky urged Steve to jump from her branches to the ground with him, at least two stories high.

"She won't let us get hurt," Bucky promised, then, with a wicked glint in his eye, "unless you're just scared to jump? You don't gotta."

Steve puffed out his chest and leaped toward Bucky, tackling him and sending them both falling. A moment of freefall seized in his chest, and then stopped as he was caught, softly, as if by wind.

"You little punk!" Bucky laughed as they floated down to the ground, the vedi's magic lowering them down reproachfully. "No wonder Hackel likes you so much. You're just as big a pain as she is!" Then he showed Steve how to thank the tree for playing, patting at her trunk and letting her feel the warmth from their skin. She was supposed to be watching the hill, Bucky explained, so she couldn’t play much more.

"What's out the hill?" Steve asked, wanting to go around the cottage to see. "Besides the corn?"

"The rest of the Bright Place, and then the Otherworld, beyond that." There was a strange current running through Bucky, as if he was just as excited as Steve. "It's awful neat. I can't go too far from the cottage, cuz of my arm, but we can explore the woods!"

"What do you mean, cuz of your arm?"

Bucky slanted him an amused look. "Well I've only got one, Steve, don't know if you noticed." He laughed when Steve smacked at his shoulder. "My other one's lost, probably in the Sallows, so I can't go too far from it."

Without a fuss, Bucky rolled up his empty sleeve, showing the place just below his shoulder where his arm should have been. Steve tried not to stare. It was amazing though - there were no scars or wounds, no lines to show that there should have been an arm there. Steve would have bet it had been taken off with magic. "Erskine's working on a spell to bring it back though, no worries!"

Although Bucky's tone was chipper, he rolled down his sleeve quickly, darting a glance up at Steve that almost seemed worried. Steve didn't know how things worked in this place, but even he could tell that this was something strange and personal. In any case, Bucky clearly didn't want to talk about it, and Steve wasn't about to make him.

"The woods sound neat," Steve said, pleased when Bucky brightened.

"Great!" he grabbed for Steve's hand. "Follow me!" But before they could go very far at all, the door to the cottage opened, releasing a plume of clove-scented air.

"Steven?" The man from before - Erskine? - poked his head out. Steve surveyed him with a critical eye. This man was a witch? He certainly didn't fit the mold as Steve knew it: No pointy hat, no warts, no ugly nose. He looked like a perfectly ordinary man, if not overtired and stained green here and there. He didn't even have a broom. Steve was seized with the urge to ask Erskine, too, to prove he was magic.

As if reading his thoughts ( _oh god, could he_?), Erskine smiled indulgently. "That is quite enough excitement for one day, I think. I can take you home now."

"Oh." Disappointment swooped sharp in his belly, though it was nothing to the crestfallen look on Bucky's face.

"Does he have to go?" His voice cracked, almost desperate, begging. His fingers tightened painfully over Steve's, then let go all at once. Erskine's face twisted with compassion.

"I'm afraid so."

"I could stay a little longer," Steve hurried to interject. Bucky looked like he was seconds away from tears. "I don't mind." Not mind? He'd just found a magic world! How could he be asked to leave so soon, without exploring?

And he felt as if he'd begun to make a friend with Bucky. Steve didn't come along making friends very easily. It wasn't fair to have to say goodbye so soon.

Erskine, however, was insistent. "It is not safe, James," he said to Bucky, who hung his head. "You know this. Say your goodbyes."

"Bye, Steve." Bucky whispered and sat down on the porch steps, sullen. He suddenly looked young, and lonely. Steve hated to see him so sad.

"Aw, c’mon,” he sat down next to Bucky and tried to smile. “It’s not so bad." Bucky didn’t look up. Steve knocked his shoulder. "I’ll come back and visit!" Far from looking reassured, Bucky sagged.

Erskine shook his head. "I'm afraid that is not a thing you can promise, Steven. Come, we will go now."

Now? Steve almost wanted to grab Bucky's hand and run to hide, but he wasn't a little kid anymore, and he was technically a guest here.

(And if Erskine really were a witch, then Steve didn't want to make him angry, no matter how gentle Erskine seemed.)

Still, quick as a flash, Steve leaned over and grabbed Bucky in a hug. He smelt like apples and hay and felt a little crunchy. Bucky stiffened with surprise before his hand came to pat awkwardly at Steve's head. "I'm coming back," Steve whispered low so Erskine could not hear. "I promise."

When he pulled away, Bucky's smile was tiny, wistful. "Bye, Steve," he said again, and he watched as Erskine put his hand on Steve's shoulder and walked him towards the edge of the fence. Steve turned once more to wave goodbye, but saw only the tiny, flat park of Fort Greene, lit up red from the sunset. The garden, and Bucky, were gone.

"Come," said Erskine, pulling Steve away from the park. Chilled air, so different from the warmth of the garden, bit at his face, and Steve had to keep blinking. Brooklyn seemed wrong all of a sudden, garish, everything just a shade too dim and that much too loud.

Strangely, despite the fact that Steve had been gone for at least an hour, the sun was still setting at the same point it had been at when Steve had found Hackel. He checked his watch and gaped. If it was right, Steve had been gone for less than five minutes! He looked up at Erskine, astonished, but Erskine didn't seem deterred. "I will walk you home," he said and started down the road.

Steve followed, bewildered at the thought of walking down the sidewalks of his neighborhood with a bonafide _witch,_ but if Erskine thought it would be a quiet walk, he was sorely mistaken, because Steven Grant Rogers never took kindly to being forced to do anything, and he couldn't help but feel cheated out of saying a proper goodbye to Bucky.

"Are you going to turn me into a frog or something?" he looked up at Erskine, belligerent. "Or curse me to not come back? Or erase my memory?"  

Erskine made a considering noise. "Would you like me to?"

Fear suddenly tightened in Steve's gut. Could Erskine really do those things? "No!"

With an apologetic tilt of his head, Erskine put a warm hand on Steve's shoulder. "Ah," he said, "I am sorry. That was an unfortunate joke. I would not do such things to you," he promised. "That is not kind magic. Your memories of the Bright Place will fade in time to a pleasant daydream; that is simply the way of that world." Steve squawked indignantly.  He'd forget? He didn't want to forget! He thought again, fiercely, of Bucky; how he'd looked as a scarecrow leaning over the field of corn...or had it been a field of pumpkins? Icy dread trickled down Steve's spine. Was he already forgetting? "However," Erskine went on. "You did save Hackelsburg. The rules in the Otherworld are strange, but they are clear on this - we owe you a favor."

"You could let me come back?" Steve tried, and Erskine laughed.

"I knew you would be asking me this! Unfortunately, I must refuse. Ask me for something else. A potion to make you never need sleep again, perhaps? A spell to help you focus in school? You would like to be strong, or fast?"

"I want to go back." Not to be deterred, Steve stopped and moved to the side of the walk, forcing Erskine to move with him so they were out of the way of passersby. Steve crossed his arms, mulish. "Why can't I? You have spells, right? Can't you make it so I can stay?" When Erskine frowned, Steve pressed on: "Bucky can stay."

"Steven," Erskine removed his hat and rubbed his hand over his balding head. "The Otherworld is not a safe space for humans to be. It is not made for you, but for the eldritch, or the lost souls who become trapped there. The Bright Place exists in Between - you yourself are Between," Erskine mused, "not a child and not a man. Perhaps this is why Hackel took you through." He shook his head. "Regardless, it is not for you to be there. You saw only the bright things. Good things. I would not have you meet the dangerous ones."

He took Steve's elbow and turned him back onto the walk. They were close now to Steve's apartment, and the closer they came, the more anxious he became. He couldn't remember the food he'd eaten in the Bright Place. There had been food, right? Pies, or sandwiches. His heart raced. He had to find out how to get back!

"I don't care if I meet dangerous things!"

With a humming noise, Erskine continued walking. "You have stories of dangerous creatures, yes? Goblins and vampires...banshees? The kelpie?" He looked down at Steve, waiting for him to nod. "They are real. They live in the Sallows beyond the field, and they would come for you, if they knew you were there."

"But Bucky said he's human!" Steve pointed out. "Is it dangerous for him?"

The easy smile slipped from Erskine's face. "Yes," he said. "It is incredibly dangerous for him, and I would have him leave as well, if he could. Do you understand now?"

No, he didn't. In fact, if Erskine thought this would deter Steve, it had the opposite effect. Concern for his new friend flared in Steve's chest, thinking of Bucky's gentle smile and straw-covered clothes. Bucky was trapped there? He was in trouble? Steve had to go back.

"Bucky said there were lots of doors to your world," Steve began, but it was too on the nose. A wry smile twisted on Erskine's face.

"There are many doors," he acknowledged. "But you will not find them. You will not even remember to look - and if you do... I am a watcher, Steven. My spells keep humans out of the Otherworld, and the eldritch out from your world. I would notice if you tried to use one of my doors." They stopped in front of Steve's apartment, and Steve, desperate, cast about for any excuse.

"What about...about..." He couldn't remember her name. Steve growled with frustration. "The cat!" he burst out. "She's not a witch, is she?"

Erskine laughed and held out his hands. "You are correct that she is not a witch. More impressively, Hackelsburg is a cat. I know many spells, but not any that can stop a cat from doing just as she pleases. Now, I will leave you. It was a pleasure, Steven," Erskine said sincerely. "I have not met a new soul in almost three years, and yours is a very bright light. Look after it."

He settled his brown hat on his head, tugged at the rim, and nodded. Steve looked into the man's lined face and wondered how he'd met him. Had they crossed paths at the bodega down the street? Was he a new neighbor? No. Steve screwed up his face with concentration. This man was a witch. Erskine. Steve had met him in a bright place on a hill. He knew he had!

Erskine smiled ruefully. "Goodbye," and he vanished without another word.

* * *

 

  


Two weeks passed before Steve was woken late, so late it was practically early, by a scratching noise at his window. He jolted up in his bed, breathing heavy from a fitful dream of fanged teeth and icy hands, of bugs the size of dinner plates, a tree that laughed when you stroked its bark... a beautiful boy with straw in his hair.

Just dreams, he thought. He rubbed at his eyes and looked to the window. A large black cat was staring into his room.

All at once, it came rushing back - the giant spiders and Erskine's cottage, the magic tree. Bucky.

Steve practically fell over himself in his rush to open the window. What was the cat's name again? Her bright green eyes glared at him. "Hackel?" he whispered.

"Prrt," she answered, stern, and turned to hop down the fire escape. She looked back at him, tail curved, and joy bloomed sudden and fierce in Steve's chest. It had been real! How could he have forgotten?

Steve grabbed his jacket and shoved his feet into boots, not minding his pajamas as he followed Hackel down the ladder and into the chill of Brooklyn. It was dark, without even the moon in the sky, but they didn't go far: Two turns down an alley, and Hackel wound herself around Steve's ankles and tripped him through a patch of stale New York morning and right into a corn field.

"Wha-" Steve breathed, but Hackel made a _prak_ sound, tail bottle straight. Steve had the distinct sense he'd been shushed. Around him, the golden corn grew taller than a grown man. Steve felt a rush of triumph. He remembered this corn field! There were at least four sketches of it in his notebook at home. He had seen it from the top of the hill!

Quietly, he picked his way between the stalks, following Hackel's black fluffy tail as it weaved first one way then the next. From somewhere in the distance, an eerie screech pierced the air, and Steve remembered the dark place beyond the field. The Sallows? Erskine's voice came to mind, warning of vampires and goblins. Steve resolutely kept his eyes on Hackel. He did not want to get lost out here.

Then, before him, a wooden pole stuck up above the crop, and on it leaned a scarecrow. Its face was blank and deathly pale, piercing blue eyes frozen on the dark horizon. Straw hung around his ears and puffed out one sleeve of his plaid red shirt. The other sleeve hung empty at his side. He stood utterly still.

"Bucky," Steve whispered. No response. "Bucky!" He wouldn't move. Even when Steve poked at his boots - old and covered in dirt - Bucky wouldn't stir. Then Hackel, smug, chirped, and something in the air _shifted_.

With a twitch of his foot, Bucky stirred, blinked. Color flooded back to his face, and he shook out his arm and legs, sending straw falling everywhere.

"Watch it," whispered Steve, snickering when Bucky startled and nearly fell to ground. "Hey, Buck."

"Steve?" He looked at Steve with wide eyes, the beginnings of an ecstatic smile tugging at his mouth, like a man overwhelmed by his own good fortune. "Steve! You remembered! You came back!"

"I told you I would, didn't I?" Steve grinned. "Now, I seem to remember you saying something about some magical woods? You gonna hang up there all day, or are we exploring?"

Bucky grinned, absolutely beaming, and Steve felt that it was the brightest thing he'd ever seen.


	2. Bogles and Snakes

Steve Rogers had never met a rule he couldn't bend for the better. Why would he listen to what his school principal had to say about staying out of fights, if it meant doing nothing when Tommy Callaghan and his friends could shove the little kids around without trouble? Why should Steve respect his elders, when the old man at the bodega made nasty remarks at Mrs. Ipkiz whenever she came into the store? What was the point of his two hands if he didn't use them to help people?

Steve's mother, Sarah Rogers, was a woman made of brightness and determination - and she had passed on her small stature, blond hair, and stubbornness to her son. Steve had been raised to do what was right, not what he was _told_ , and from the moment he'd seen Bucky Barnes's lonely eyes, he'd felt a hot conviction that he'd do whatever he could to keep that sadness from Bucky's face.

If that meant breaking a few rules, well...it wasn't like Steve was a stranger to the concept.

Still, he'd quickly learned that, in the Otherworld, there were a few rules that absolutely _could not_ be broken. They were these:

  1. **_Steve could not get into the Otherworld on his own._**



This was not for lack of trying. For months, he'd marked the places Hackel would bring him, going back after Hackel brought him through - quickly, before he could forget the Bright Place again - only to fall through bushes and search through the high grass in Prospect to no avail. Only Hackel could get him in and out without Erskine noticing, and only Hackel could take him back.

Still, he tried, and Bucky liked to listen and laugh at Steve's stories of failing to get back in, though he hadn't been pleased when Steve had shown up one month with his wrist sprained from scaling a large fir.

"Idiot," Bucky had grumbled and sneaked into Erskine's cottage for a healing spell while Steve crouched hidden in the corn field. That visit had been spent with Bucky lecturing Steve on being safe, especially out in the world where Bucky couldn't help him out - a waste of the month's visit, if you asked Steve.

And that was another rule which couldn't be broken:

  1. **_Steve could only get through on a New Moon._**



It wasn't ideal, but it was better than waiting once a year for Halloween, which was when, according to Bucky, all the doors opened, and Erskine couldn't stop anything from coming and going.

Steve had _plans_ for Halloween - at least he did, when he could remember them. This was the third, and most annoying rule:

  1. **_Steve couldn't remember the Otherworld without Hackel._**



It didn't matter how fiercely he held on to the thought of the croaking toadstools in the garden, or of Bucky's laughter and voice and alarmingly pretty face - within half an hour back in Brooklyn, those memories would fade away to a dream.

Even when he wrote everything down, and left notes to himself, Steve couldn't remember. He would read the pages in the morning, and his mind would twist the memory into Steve having tried his hand at writing fiction. Impressed with his own imagination, he would shake his head at the "THIS ISN'T A DREAM, STEVE. IT REALLY HAPPENED," he'd written to himself, assuming he'd tried (and failed) to write subversive fiction.

The one time he'd tried to bring a camera through with him, the images had come back all brightness, and Steve in the morning had wondered when - and why - he'd taken pictures directly of the sun.

Instead, Steve had figured out to leave himself notes: "Buy more sci-fi books" read one, and Steve, remembering his dream of reading comics in a golden field, followed the inclination. "Pack your notes," didn't make much sense, but it wasn't hard to keep his old school notes in a folder on his desk - and he'd snatch them up to bring to Bucky each month, so Bucky could have, in his words, "something to think about besides corn and ghosts."

("Eating more fish is good for you," read another note, bizarrely. Steve despised fish, and his mother was confused when he'd request some for dinner, only to barely touch it. Hackel was grateful for the leftovers.)

So it went. Every month on the New Moon for the past half year, Steve had dressed in his pajamas, told his mother goodnight, and gone to his room to sleep before being woken by Hackel. Then, it would all come flooding back, and Steve's heart would leap as he changed into his jacket and boots, grabbed a fresh bag of presents for Bucky and Hackel, and followed the cat out into the night.

Sneaking into the Otherworld was surprisingly easy, when you had a cat leading the way. Steve suspected that they could use the same door each time, but Hackel seemed to enjoy leading him around the town, tripping him up and taking him to obscure trodden parts of Brooklyn. It was a bit of a joke for her, Steve thought; and he learned he could speed up the process with promises of scraps from his dinner.

Then they'd finally arrive, and Bucky would be waiting, fresh from his post in the field, looking better and more happy than he did in Steve's newly regained memories - always eager to take Steve on their next adventure.

In many ways, they were best friends just as any other boys would be best friends. They joked together, explored together. Bucky took him almost always into the woods, which were strange and drooping and filled with glowing caves and ghostly figures.

Or, if Steve wasn't feeling well, or if Bucky himself were tired, they'd sit together in the corn field and read the books and comics Steve brought through with him. Sometimes, Bucky would ask Steve to go over his notes with him, asking questions that gave away his sharp mind. Bucky especially loved science, and poetry was a close second. Steve loved listening to Bucky talk about them for hours afterwards.

(It didn't hurt Steve's own grades, either.)

In other ways, however, their friendship was different from anything Steve had known. He was on good terms with some people in his school, but his fast temper and natural shyness precluded anything more than that. Bucky was Steve's closest friend.

For Bucky, however, Steve wasn't just his closest friend. He was his _only_ friend.

"There's Erskine, and the vedi, and Hackel," he'd explained, "and beyond the Bright Place, in the Otherworld, there are other people, fairies and such, but they only come through the Bright Place on Halloween, and I can't go too far from Erskine's field without my arm."

Bucky, Steve had learned, had been in the Bright Place for more than three years. Erskine had found him, lost and clutching the stump of his arm, wandering in the corn field the day after Halloween. He'd tried to take Bucky back to Steve's world, but something held Bucky to the field like a dog on a leash. Erskine had had no other option but to keep Bucky there while he worked on a way to break the spell.

It hurt Steve's heart to think of Bucky without anyone else but Erskine and a cat for company. Bucky was such a vibrant, excitable person. Steve was sure that, in the human world, he would have no trouble making friends. "You're worth ten friends in one," Bucky had told Steve when he heard this, and Steve had needed a moment to fight down his blush. "Besides," Bucky confided, thumb rubbing at his fingers anxiously. "I...I don't remember too much of your - of our world anymore. It'll come back when I leave, I'm sure of it, but..." He shrugged. "No point worrying til I get it back! So long as I stay outta the Sallow Place, then I'm safe here."

That led to the one rule in the Otherworld which was not so set in stone - but the one which Bucky was sternest about:

  1. **_Steve was never allowed to go to the Sallows._**



"I would rather you never ever come back again," Bucky had declared heatedly when Steve had brought it up, "than ever take you there."

Then he'd refused to hear another word about it, shutting Steve down again when he asked and finally telling Hackel to take Steve straight home, wasting all of their February visit.

In truth, this was a rule that Steve didn't mind. Bucky did his best each visit to quickly lead Steve away from the cornfield and the black wall of the Sallows; but sometimes, Hackel would bring Steve early, and he'd have to wait at the base of the scarecrow post for Bucky to wake up. That close to the border, the air was icy and sharp, a creeping watchful emptiness - Steve was fine with leaving it be. There were plenty of things in the Bright Place to distract him.

Today, for example, Bucky had them back in Erskine's garden. Erskine himself had left the Bright Place and was off gathering ingredients for potions deeper in the Otherworld, into the corners where Bucky couldn't explore. He'd left Bucky with a list of chores for upkeep while he was gone, and Steve's June visit coincided with the biggest bother of them.

"Bogles are the _worst_ ," Bucky told Steve from where they sat on the rickety garden fence. Bucky had his patchwork pants rolled at the ankles, straw spilling from the cuffs, and his plaid shirt was untucked and hanging loosely. Stuffing aside, he looked so normal that Steve could almost believe that they were sitting together on a curb in Brooklyn, rather than on a fence in a witch's garden, watching the ground for anything "suspicious," whatever that meant. "Bogles blight the squash and dig up anything good, and they come back every solstice like clockwork."

Bucky had forced Steve into holding the bait - a foul, rotten potato, dangling from a fishing pole - claiming that he couldn't hold it "on account I only got one arm, Steve, yeesh, don't be such a free loader."

Across the yard, offended by the smell, Hackel sat on the porch and glared.

"Can't Erskine just spell them away?" Steve could think of a million other things he'd rather do in the Bright Place than watch dirt and hold a rotting vegetable.

They were _supposed_ to go swimming. Bucky'd planned it. With summer solstice a week away, the air in the Bright Place burned hazy and thick and sweet. It made the boys restless, and Steve almost wanted to go straight home, where the June air in Brooklyn was still hot, but not so uncanny with it; but he couldn't give up a day with Bucky, especially once Bucky learned that Steve would be turning sixteen before his next visit. The pond, he said, would be a present for Steve, something fresh and cool and fun for them both -

\- but first they had to stare at dirt, apparently.

"Magic would hurt the bogle." Bucky glared down into the garden as if he wouldn't be averse to the idea. "Erskine doesn't like to hurt nothing, if he can help it. Just keep an eye out for - ah! Look! By the cabbages!"

Steve stared harder, cursing his weak eyes. All he could see were the plants rustling in the wind and - but there was no wind, was there, only the still and hazy heat of summer, and the cabbage plant was _moving_.

Below it, the earth shifted, heaving and twitching while something dug, and Steve watched with fascination as something - long and thin like a crab's leg - sneaked out from the dirt and scratched, _one, two, three_ , against the leaves of the cabbage plant before darting back underground.

"What's it doing?" Steve whispered as the leg crept out again to scratch lightly at the carrots.

"Starting shit. Little bastards. You'd get along with 'em." Bucky nudged Steve with a grin. "It's spreading the blight. They eat ruined things, so it's gotta ruin the crops. Fuckers."

" _I_ don't ruin things!" Steve protested, but Bucky shh'ed him. The ground had started moving again, this time closer to Steve's ruined potato

Sure enough, the crab-like leg peeked out from the earth to grab for the bait, but Bucky had leaned around Steve to grab the fishing pole, and he edged the potato up and out of reach. He'd had to put his arm around Steve to do it, and he smelled of straw and apples and just a hint of the cold of the Sallows; Steve was thankful he'd already turned red from the heat, so Bucky wouldn't wonder at his sudden flush.

Maybe fishing for bogles wasn't _so_ bad, he thought.

Frustrated, the bogle reached out further, another leg and then another emerging from the garden soil. "C'mon," Bucky muttered, pulling the potato further out of reach. His voice was low, and his breath tickled Steve's ear. A rush of nerves jerked Steve away, and at the same moment, the soil exploded underneath them as the bogle burst from the ground. Steve yelped, lost his balance, and fell skinny-ankles-over-head backwards - and with him he pulled Bucky, the fishing pole, and, attached to the other end, the bogle.

They crashed into the tall grass in a tangle of limbs, hay, and scuttling crab legs. "Grab it!" Bucky shouted, wheezing and breathless with laughter as Steve shrieked without dignity. He couldn't help it: The bogle was hairy and fast and scurrying up his belly. "Catch it!"

"Oh," Steve snapped, voice high and panicked as the bogle scurried up his torso. "Is _that_ what we're meant to be doing? I thought I'd just - get it _off me._ " He slapped at his chest and tried to scramble from under Bucky, who was now paralyzed with laughter.

Steve caught a glimpse of dense black fuzz, blurred around the edges like the reach of a shadow, before the bogle leaped from his chest toward the cornfield.

"Catch it!" Bucky shouted uselessly.

On pure instinct, Steve flung his arm out, felt something coarse and wet, and grabbed onto the back of the bogle. "I got it!" he screamed. Finally, Bucky pulled himself up, and Steve was able to get a look at the thing squirming in his hand.

For all intents and purposes, the bogle looked like a giant ball of twine, messed about and tangled, with eight spindly legs sticking out. It was altogether the size of a mole, and it made an angry rattling noise as Bucky pulled a squashed tomato from his pocket.

"Stay outta the garden!" Bucky scolded. The bogle rattled indignantly in response, and Bucky crushed the tomato in his hand, flicking the juice at the bogle (and all over Steve). "Alright that's good. Throw it away, Steve."

Steve gawped. "We _just_ caught it!" he cried. "It took us _hours_!"

"What, you want it as a pet?" Bucky looked exasperated, which Steve felt was very unfair. "Throw it away!"

With one last morbidly curious look at the strange creature, Steve let it drop to the ground. It shuddered angrily once more, but surprisingly didn't return to the garden, instead rustling down the hill away from Erskine's cottage.

"They don't like tomatoes," Bucky explained calmly, lips twitching at the corner when Steve turned to look at him. "Oh...you look..." He burst out laughing again.

Steve had an idea - covered in grass, dirt, and tomato juice - exactly how he looked. "At least I don't have hay sticking outta my ears," he groused, and Bucky had no other response but to tackle him back to the ground.  

It never grew dark in the Bright Place, and time never seemed to move in a sensible way, so Steve had no idea how long they roughhoused before the heat overtook them. Eventually, Bucky let up from scattering grass into Steve's hair and declared that they had just enough time to make it to the pond before Hackel had to take Steve home.

"This is your birthday present from me," Bucky told Steve as they picked their way down the hill, Hackel trotting begrudgingly behind them. "You'll have to tell me what everybody else gets you on the other side."

Bucky had a strange notion that Steve had many friends back in Brooklyn, despite Steve's stories otherwise, and he got a funny look on his face whenever he mentioned Steve's life in New York - as if he didn't like to talk of it, but didn't want Steve to know that.

"There ain't a pond we can swim in in Brooklyn," Steve assured him and, when Bucky puffed out his chest proudly, continued: "And there ain't anything as neat as all the things here, anyway." After all, the Otherworld was _magic_ , magic in a way that Steve had stopped believing in years ago. That alone would have been enough for Steve to come back, so he could see the floating lights and hear the eerie music that rang in the distance. Even without all that, though, this place had Bucky.

They'd reached the woods, and Bucky took Steve's hand in his to guide him around the toadstool circles. It wasn't safe, he always said, for Steve to be in the woods - most of the things in the Bright Place weren't alive like he and Steve were, and they'd be curious enough to snatch Steve up, if Bucky didn't keep an eye on him.

Despite this, Steve loved the woods. Mist flowed like a river in the canopy in glittering whites and silvers. It undulated above them as the boys picked their way towards the pond. The trees here were nothing like those in Brooklyn. They twisted and stooped, hung their branches like arches in some places and like tired arms in others. The air smelled of moss, and all colors of flowers grew from soft ground. Sometimes Steve could see the glowing outline of people walking through the tall grass - a silvery child running behind a tree, a transparent woman in a dragging long dress. Spirits, Bucky'd told him: ghosts that got lost in the Otherworld.

Something waved in the corner of his eye, and when Steve looked, he saw a man, tall and skinny - too skinny, as if he'd been stretched beyond the limits of his flesh. His cheeks were sunken, waxy, and jaundiced. He leaned on a tree several yards off the path; and in his hand dangled a hollowed gourd that barely contained a rioting flame.

A wide grin cracked across his face when Steve caught his eye. "Nice light," he said, then held up his lantern. "Wanna see mine?" His high voice echoed and caught Bucky's attention. Quick as a whip, Bucky turned to see who it was, grip tight on Steve's hand. He relaxed when he saw the strange man, but still threw him an  unimpressed look before tugging Steve away.

"Don't say nothing to him," Bucky instructed Steve under his breath. The man was watching them leave, still grinning, that strange lantern flickering harshly. "That's Cheap Jack. He'll take a mile if you give him an inch, and then more besides. Slippery bastard."

"He doesn't look like a ghost," Steve wondered aloud when they were far enough away. "Is he a witch? Or a fairy?"

"He's not really anything, anymore," Bucky said dismissively. "He used to be Irish. Real proud of that." Their road forked, and Bucky turned them around to walk backwards down the left path. Hackel followed his lead as well.

Otherworld rules were strange.

Steve thought he could still see something of Jack's fire. "So he's dead then?" Steve pressed.

"Nah, but he's not alive either. He's Between - been that way for a while." Bucky turned them back around. "He's tricky though."

Steve wanted to ask how you could manage to be not alive but also not dead at the same time, but they had reached the pond, and it was shining and tempting enough that he forgot all about the strange man - forgot about anything else aside from diving straight in.

Both boys were hot and itchy with it, and they wasted no time. With a triumphant shout, Bucky jumped straight into the water, clothes and all, and he pulled Steve in after him. Hackel, too dignified for such play, made her perch in a tree nearby, far from their shouts and splashes.

The water was _wonderful_ , washing away all traces of the garden and the hot day. Steve sighed in relief and started paddling. Bucky, despite his missing arm, was a strong swimmer; he swam around Steve like a minnow as Steve - who hadn't had a growth spurt in years, and hadn't been swimming since even longer before - struggled to match him.

Once he reached the middle of the pond, Steve gave up, blew his air out all at once, and flopped over onto his back to float. Bucky swam further before noticing Steve had fallen behind, and then he came straight back.

"I thought you said you knew how to swim!" he laughed, darting under the water and poking at Steve's side.

"I thought straw molded when it got wet," Steve mused aloud, and he sputtered when Bucky sent a wave of icy pond water up his nose. Steve jerked up, ready to dunk Bucky back under the water in retaliation, and as such he was the one to notice the movement in the trees on the shoreline.

"Bucky!" he swam backwards, kicking frantically when he saw what it was: a snake, pale white and the size of an underground train. It was the biggest thing in the Otherworld Steve had ever seen, and it moved lazily through the trees towards the water. Steve's heart froze in terror. "Buck!"  

"What?" he heard Bucky complain behind him, then soft, " _Shit_."

The snake reached the shoreline and slid its head - big as a horse - below the surface. Steve's toes curled. He thought of that large head at the bottom of the pond, looking up to see Steve and rushing from the deep to swallow him whole.

Although, perhaps this was one of the good beasts that lived in the Bright Place, like the vedi that guarded the hillside, or like Hackel. Steve glanced over his shoulder to see Bucky, pale and wide-eyed.

Not a good beast, then.

"Okay," Bucky whispered, keeping his eye on the snake's body as it fed into the water. "Okay, Steve, don't worry. Just don't make a noise." Softly, without disturbing the water, Bucky came up and wrapped his arm around Steve's chest until Steve's back was firm against Bucky's front. He could feel the quick beat of Bucky's heart - or maybe that was his own - as Bucky slowly swam them backwards with slow, purposeful kicks. If the situation hadn't been so frightening, Steve would have lost all concentration at the feeling of Bucky, strong and steady, holding him up in the water - but fear had a wonderful way of commanding your concentration, even as the snake paid them no mind as it focused on cooling itself in the water.

"Just a big ol' snake, Steve, nothing to worry about."

Steve could think of plenty to worry about, starting with the size of the thing and ending with its many teeth. From her tree above the snake, Hackel stood with her fur bristling, practically shaking in place.

"We gotta get Hackel," Steve murmured, but Bucky shh'ed him.

"She can mind herself," he breathed, and true to form, Hackel walked around the trunk of the tree and disappeared.

Steve felt his feet touch something clumped and squishy, and would have jumped if he hadn't realized that it was the start of the shore beneath his feet. Together, he and Bucky scrambled out of the water and bolted, Hackel appearing at their heels and meowing disapprovingly.

"Did you see the size of that thing?!" Bucky whooped as they cut through the woods, water flicking from his hair. His hand was tight around Steve's. "I can't believe it - must be cuz it's so close to solstice. Erskine's gonna freak when he sees a jormund so close to the field!"

 _Steve_ couldn't believe it either - the snake had been enormous, pale and shining and horrifically beautiful. He felt like his feet couldn't move him fast enough away. Still, he laughed: "That was the best present ever!" Bucky grinned at him, and they broke through the woods into the clearing at the base of Erskine's hill.

Hackel yowled at them both, twining between Steve's ankles as she always did when it was time to send him home. The bright happiness faded from Bucky's face. "I wish you could stay longer." He seemed to realize all at once that he was still holding Steve's hand; he dropped it and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Sorry we couldn't spend more time at the pond. It was your present, and all."

Steve rolled his eyes. "I think half an hour at a _magic pond_ is better than a whole month at Coney Island," he said honestly. Bucky looked confused, and Steve remembered that Bucky had lost most of his memories of New York. "It's a park, with rides and stuff. I'll take you there, when Erskine gets you out of here."

"You won't get sick of visiting before then, will you?" Bucky teased, but underneath the sly smirk, Steve could hear a genuine concern. Hackel yowled again, urgent, and Steve stooped to pick her up.

"Bucky," he said sternly, trying to look serious over Hackel's thick black fur. "You couldn't stop me from coming to see you if you tried. I'll see you next month, yeah?"

The air had started shimmering, Bucky going fuzzy around the edges. Still, Steve saw him smile. "Okay, Steve." Threads of darkness trickled around the edges of his vision, Brooklyn overlapping and taking over the Bright Place. "Bring some more of those spacemen stories!" Bucky yelled.

Then, Steve was standing again in the alley behind his apartment, Hackel clutched to his chest. He closed his eyes, the afterimage of Bucky still blurry behind them.

Sometimes he wondered if it really was all real, or if he had gone insane, and had just been hallucinating in the streets while holding a giant cat.

But his clothes still dripped from the lake, and a jewel-green leaf brighter than any color Steve knew in Brooklyn had caught in Hackel's fur. Steve plucked it up and put Hackel down, knowing that she was following him up the fire escape. He shimmied back through his window and changed into his dry pajamas, putting the over-green leaf between the pages of a notebook for safe keeping. He wouldn't remember it, he knew, until July - but it comforted him to have it there all the same.

Quickly, before he could forget, he wrote himself a quick note: "SPACEMAN STORIES." Hopefully he'd remember the urge to read them with Bucky, even if he wouldn't remember Bucky as anything more than a daydream.

Frowning, exhausted with the day in the Bright Place but still not ready to forget it, he picked up his sketchbook and outlined everything - the flowing high grass growing around Erskine's porch, the twine-ball bogle, dangling from a rotten vegetable (Steve couldn't remember if it had been an apple, or maybe a potato), a ghostly woman floating through dark trees.

And Bucky, always Bucky, with a smile scrunching up his face as he laughed at Steve.

"Steve?" He jerked his head up from where he'd fallen asleep on his desk to see his mother, still dressed in her work clothes from the hospital, standing in his doorway. "I saw your light was on. What are you doing out of bed?"

Steve looked down, his sketchbook damp from his hair. Had he showered before bed? He couldn't remember. "Just, drawing," he explained, confused. His window was open, too. When had he..? He shrugged at his mother. "Can you sleepdraw, instead of sleepwalk?"

Sarah's mouth twisted in a smirk. "You can sleep-waste-electricity, is all I see," she said pointedly, smiling when Steve obligingly flicked off the lamp at his desk. "Go to sleep, Steve," she directed.

"Night, ma," Steve yawned, climbing back into his bed. In the hazy place between sleep and wakefulness, he heard a cat yowl in the street. "Night, Hacks," he mumbled without knowing why, and when he slept he dreamed first of a cruel flickering light illuminating the grinning face of a dead man, but that horror faded to a glittering pond, to water dripping into a young man's sparkling eyes, and - strangely - to a garden full of crabs and potatoes.


	3. Jack O'Lantern

Looking back, Steve could pin the moment where everything began to go wrong on the day he first talked to Cheap Jack.

Not that the day started out terribly at all. Hackel had brought him through a chilled September morning straight into the cornfield, which usually meant that Erskine was home and Steve wouldn’t be allowed to go up the hill.

Sure enough, when Steve peeked through the thick golden stalks towards the hilltop, he saw a flickering light in the windows of the cottage. Plumes of smoke in varying shades of green poured from the chimney and crept like fog down the hill. A great fizzling _pop_ blew the front door open, sending the overly large hairy chickens screeching and scattering about.

Steve, crouched in the cornfield, itched like _mad_ to sneak up the hill, to peer into the cottage, to see an actual witch working actual magic. Did he wear a cone hat and robes? Did magic come out from his hands like lightning? His imagination raced, but even still he couldn’t picture Erskine, whom he remembered as a calm, harmless-looking man, crouched over a witch’s cauldron or chanting spells.

Granted, most likely, witchcraft wasn’t like that at all, but that left the question of what it _was_ like.

But despite his curiosity, Steve knew they couldn’t risk Erskine discovering Steve in the Bright Place; and no matter what kind of magic allowed Hackel to sneak Steve through the doors, certainly it wouldn’t stop Erskine from noticing Steve with his nose pressed to the window. He sighed, sending the cottage one last glance (the vedi waved in his direction from her place up the hill, and Steve waved back from behind the corn stalks) before following Hackel to wake up Bucky.

Bucky’s post sat just on the edge of the cornfield, a quarter mile away from where the Sallow Place’s border stood like a great black wall. Steve didn’t like to look at it, and Hackel always stayed between him and the Sallow Place like a guard, as if Steve would trip or tumble for hundreds of yards and somehow fall through.

As a scarecrow, Bucky leaned on a pole atop a platform of roughly cut wood planks, perhaps a foot or so off the ground. Always in a different pose, today he sat with his boots dangling off the edge, straw spilling out from the cuffs of his jeans, as he faced the Sallows, looking for all intents and purposes like nothing more unusual than a particularly life-like scarecrow. Twigs and moss, rather than hair, spilled from under a floppy hat, and his face seemed made of wax. His eyes, usually so sharp, looked like glass marbles, and his sleeve was puffed with hay and sprigs of sage.

For a mad moment, Steve wondered what would happen if he took a twig from underneath Bucky’s hat - would Bucky wake up with a bald spot? Would the twig turn back into hair when the spell faded?

As if she could hear his thoughts - and if she could, Steve wouldn’t be surprised - Hackel nipped at his fingers with a reproachful _prrt_. She stared with her bright green eyes until, obliging, Steve bent to pick her up. A smug noise purred from her chest, and Steve sighed, her voluminous black fur tickling into his nose as he hefted her onto the platform.

(Steve had, many visits already, seen Hackel jump to the platform on her own. Truly, she was so large it seemed the distance was more like an easy step for her rather than a leap, but Hackel enjoyed making Steve carry her, and Steve had learned there was no reasoning with cats, especially magical ones.)

There was no noise, no feeling in the air, to indicate the workings of a spell. Rather, between one moment and the next, easy as anything, Bucky sat where before the scarecrow had been - as if Steve’s eyes had been playing tricks. The only evidence that Bucky had been anything other than human was the sticks and straw that fell away from his empty sleeve, and the way he stretched out his stiff limbs. Bucky cracked his neck, pushed the floppy hat off his forehead, then caught sight of Steve and grinned.

“Nice jammies, Rogers.”

Hackel purred, as if her lack of patience weren't the reason Steve had barely had time to do more than jam his feet into boots and grab his bag before following her out his window. His pajamas were over-large, and the robe he’d thrown on around them frayed at the hem. Still, considering Bucky always wore the same short jeans and plaid shirt, it was rich of him to comment on what Steve was wearing.

Steve rolled his eyes. “Nice morning breath, straw-face. Your smell what keeps the birds away?”

“It’s my intimidating physique,” Bucky hammed, puffing out his chest and jumping to the ground. “Erskine’s home,” he said, a bit unnecessarily, as another _bang_ echoed from the hilltop. “You set up camp here, and I’ll bring us back some breakfast after I put some food out for the broonies. You bring anything?”

Steve dug into his bag and handed over a slice of bread. He’d never met the broonies - according to Bucky, they were a kind of fairy that lived under the cottage and came out to tidy up when everyone slept - but he brought them food to stay on their good side, regardless.

“Great.” Bucky shoved the bread into his pocket. “Be right back! Stay with Hacks. No wandering off. Promise.”

“I know.” Steve rolled his eyes again. “I promise.” The air stilled for a moment, as if the Bright Place were listening. “I’ll stay with Hackel til you get back.”

“And?”

He sighed. “I won’t go into the Sallows while you're gone. I promise. Mother hen.” It seemed as if the cornfield relaxed around them, the stalks rustling again in the new wind. Bucky nodded his approval, scratched Hackel under her chin, and set off quickly towards the hill. Steve soon lost sight of him through the tall stalks, so he set instead to clearing a spot for himself on the ground, laying out his robe like a rug and swinging his bag from his shoulders.

Hackel waited a moment, and then gave a pointed chirp.

“I didn’t forget you,” Steve assured. He unbuttoned the front pocket of his bag to find a sliver of dried ham. “Sorry I didn’t remember to bring more.” Hackel leaned precariously over the edge of the platform, one great paw on Steve’s shoulder for balance. She ate the ham directly, her rough tongue licking over Steve’s fingers, and Steve got a mouthful of her fur for his troubles.  

By the time Bucky came back, laden with scones and a steaming thermos of hot chocolate, Steve had unpacked his bag - two books for Bucky, as well as a blank spiral and a pencil, and Steve’s own drawing materials - and had set himself up for a quiet afternoon (or, the Otherworld equivalent) visit: The usual, when Erskine was home, and they couldn’t explore without risk of being seen.

Bucky hopped back onto his post, legs dangling by Steve’s head, and passed the basket of food down for Steve to take his share. The scones were delicate, full of poppy seeds, and sweetened with honey and milk. Tasting them felt the same as curling under a soft blanket on a rainy morning, and Steve had to eat slowly to avoid falling asleep.

Their companionable silence lasted all of five seconds, before Bucky’s booted foot nudged at Steve’s shoulder. "Are they really that tall?" he asked, pointing to the half-drawn roller coaster in Steve's sketchbook. "All the people look like ants."

Steve shot him a wry look before returning to his rendition of the Cyclone. "Maybe I just always draw people to look like ants. Seems like every time I try to draw _you_ , it comes out looking like a bug." Bucky rolled his eyes, but still laughed when Steve went on: "Straw coming out of your head like antennas, big buggy eyes, teeth like mandibles..."

"Jeez, you’re a jerk," berated Bucky affectionately, rolling onto his back. Above them and through the corn stalks, the fog from Erskine’s potions floated a sage-green against the bright sky.

Steve watched him for a moment, then whispered, with relish: " _Buggy_."

Bucky actually snorted with laughter. "Do not make that a thing," he warned and shoved at Steve, who laughed in his face before adding an outline of the Ferris Wheel to his drawing of Coney Island.

"Hey, I remember those! Ferris Wheels!" Bucky pointed excitedly. Then his voice turned sly. "I remember it was a good place to make time with your sweetheart."

Steve sputtered around a mouthful of hot chocolate. "Bucky!" he cried, face red. "You ain't been in one of those since you were twelve, at least!”

“And?” The corner of Bucky’s mouth ticked up in a smug grin.

“What, you were ‘making time’ _then_?"

Bucky's smirk turned lazy. "Steve," he said, teasing, "you're talking like you've never done it. Is that true? Sixteen and never Been Up the Ferris Wheel?" The way he said it made it very clear it was a euphemism.  

"Buck, come on."

"Maybe you did," Bucky pressed on. "Maybe you took a girl with you on your birthday, and she wanted to see the fireworks from the top of the wheel. Did you show a girl some fireworks, Steve - ow!" Bucky scowled and rubbed his head.

"Shut up," Steve said and brandished his sketchbook in another threat. Hackel gave a warning hiss - though whether it was to Steve, for hitting Bucky, to Bucky, for teasing Steve, or to them both for disturbing her, Steve couldn’t tell. Either way, both boys muttered an apology, and Steve opened his book to a fresh page and etched some new lines: to be a picture of his mother, by Bucky's request.

Since Steve’s last visit, summer solstice had come and gone, and the Bright Place had relaxed out of that burning thrum, to his relief. It was quiet again, save for the chiming of distant bells, the occasional shriek from the forest round the hill. A plum-sized and -colored beetle crawled across Steve's paper; and he realized all at once that he'd been drawing in silence for quite some time. Curious, he glanced over at Bucky.

He was looking at Steve, pensive, full bottom lip caught between his teeth. "Did you?" he asked when Steve caught his eye.

"Did I what?"

"Take a girl for your birthday - or, I dunno, a boy, if...you're that way."

"No," Steve bit. Bucky pursed his lips in a frown.

"Nothing wrong with being that way," he said finally, quiet.

"No, not _no_ like _that_ ." Steve felt overwarm. "There _ain’t_ nothing wrong with being like that. I meant, no to both. Either. Neither. I didn't - not with anybody." Bucky couldn't understand. Even when he'd lived in Steve's world, Bucky would have been popular. He was strong, funny, beautiful. He wouldn't know what it was like, when you were none of those things, and awkward besides - how embarrassing it could be, when people brought it up, even when they meant well. It felt like it was only a matter of time before they solved the puzzle of why Steve had no sweetheart, and Steve didn’t care much for that answer. "People ain't exactly lining up, Bucky."

"What, everybody over there go blind since I've been gone?" Bucky's eyes had gained a new focus. They burned down at Steve. "What's not to line up for?"

Steve shrugged, wanting to change the subject. "I don't want a line anyway," he said and hoped that would be the end of it.

"Nothing wrong with that, either," Bucky said with conviction. Spirits restored, he rolled to peer over Steve's shoulder. "That's your ma?"

Steve looked down at his drawing - and Sarah Rogers smiled back up at him, with her large bright eyes, crooked nose, and proud chin. He smiled softly, feeling shy all of a sudden. "Yeah."

"She's real pretty," Bucky observed, and Steve felt pride puff out his chest.

"Yeah."

"You look a lot like her."

"Hey!" Steve pushed Bucky away, laughing, and Bucky toppled off the platform with a yelp and a scattering of hay. Hackel growled a warning. It wouldn’t do to make too much of a ruckus, when Erskine was home. "I'm not pretty, you jerk!"

From his back, wreathed by glinting grass, Bucky blinked up at him, all mischief. "Sure you are," he said. "You're real pretty, Steve." Steve's breath caught in his throat, and he thought desperately of what he should say - but Hackel growled again, and Bucky frowned, annoyed. "What?" he looked up at her.

She was spared answering by the tall, thin man who leaned in through the corn. "Hello, there," he said, voice high and echoing.

A too-large grin split the man’s waxen face, eyes red-lined and heavy with bags. He wore a suit like he’d been to a funeral, though it hung off his skinny frame enough to look like robes.

Steve had no trouble recognizing him. Quite a few renditions of that grim face sat on Steve's desk at home. His mother hadn't liked them very much. "Is everything alright at school?" she'd asked after noticing the repeated pictures of a skeleton-thin man with hollow eyes and a cruel grin. It was the man from the forest - Bucky'd called him Cheap Jack.

In a flash, Bucky sprang to his feet, all good humor gone. Steve followed his lead. "What are you doing here?" Bucky demanded. "Get out, before I tell Erskine you're walking where you shouldn't."

"Easy, easy," Jack continued to smile, as if his face were stuck. He had a twitch of some kind, Steve noticed, so that he was never completely still. As he spoke, his arms jerked; his feet tapped; his head jolted from side to side. In his left hand, he clutched that same hollowed-out gourd. Steve could feel the heat from its flame from across the fence. "No need to get all up in arms...ah..." Jack laughed. "All up in _arm_ \- you still haven't got that sorted, eh, scarecrow?"

Steve bristled with indignation and angled himself in front of Bucky, trying to hide his surprise at how tall Jack really was: easily seven, maybe even eight feet, but skinnier even than Steve. Still - "You got a problem?" Steve challenged.

"Who doesn't?" Jack looked at Steve, twitching. "We all got problems. What's your problem, little man? Tell me. I like to help."

"Don't talk to him." Bucky cut in, fierce. "We're not playin', Jack, so you just get going before Hackel goes and gets Erskine."

"That would just be rude." Jack ignored Bucky and kept his vacant eyes on Steve. "I can't leave without introducing myself to the new hanger on."

"No need," Steve glared. "I know you. You're Cheap Jack. So now you can go."

"Steve," Bucky said quellingly. "Don't talk to him."

Jack spoke over him. "Cheap Jack, sure, sometimes. Or there's Stingy Jack, Walking Jack, Jack o' Light, Old Man Jacobs... _Drunk_ Jack, though I haven’t had a drink since before your great-grandmothers were born. Jack o' Lantern's a popular one lately. Take your pick. I'm at your leisure..." he tilted his head, grinning, "...Steve, was it? You've got quite the light, there. Why haven't you found the scarecrow's arm, then?"

"Hackel!" Bucky said suddenly. "Take Steve home."

"What?!" Steve jerked his head around to look at Bucky indignantly. He had only arrived barely an hour ago! "No! Why?" Did Bucky think Steve was scared of this weird old guy? So he was tall and skinny, big deal.  

"Yeah, scarecrow, why?" Jack crossed his arms where he leaned against the post, fingers dancing like spider legs. "You don't want Steve here finding out the real reason you've got him hanging," he held up his lantern like a hint, "around?"

To Steve's surprise, Bucky flushed, angry. "It ain't like that at all!" he said, so explosively that Jack lost his manic grin. Without it, his cheeks hung in folds like pumpkin rings.

"It isn't?"

"It isn't like what?" Steve asked, but Bucky was shaking his head. Steve stomped his foot. “Isn’t like _what_?”

"Why are you still here, then?" Jack looked at Steve, head ticking to the side. "Stuck like the scarecrow?"

"Bucky's not stuck," Steve insisted. Next to him, Bucky had fallen silent. "He's just...waiting."

"Waiting is a certain kind of stuck." Now that he wasn’t smiling, Jack looked like a caricature of exhaustion. "I'd know. Funny thing about being Between - you're always waiting for something to tip you one way or the other. You're waiting too, then. Sure aren't doing anything about it."

"I can't do anything," Steve frowned. "I don't have magic."

"The scarecrow can’t do anything, sure," Jack waved the hand not holding the lantern at Bucky, who looked positively furious. "I get that. His light's almost out. But this one," Jack looked at Steve, and his face cracked back up - tick tick tick - into a wide grin. "You're bright enough. Why not go get your friend his - "

"He doesn't go to the Sallow Place," Bucky cut in. "He's human."

"Hmmm." Jack looked at Steve again, long, considering. Steve tilted his chin up and stared right back, belligerent. "Human, and Irish, to boot. That's where I started, too. I’m off to visit the watcher. I could put in a good word, see if we could get you a deal to come walking with me.”

“Like Erskine would listen to a word you say,” Bucky cut in. “You mind your own business. Steve ain’t going anywhere with you.”

Steve wasn’t so sure. “You know where Bucky’s arm is?”

Jack grinned. “Wouldn’t that be a trick.” Then, in a sudden change of mood, he picked up a scone from the pile. It turned to dust in his palm, but still he seemed satisfied. “A lovely day to you both, Scarecrow. Steve. Good to see someone from the Old Country." He tipped his head at Hackel. "Good to see you, too, ma'am." And off he left, lantern swinging along as he walked in long, loping strides. Steve tried to watch which way he went, but Bucky was there, grabbing his elbow and dragging him back towards the post.

"I told you not to talk to him!" he hissed, shoulders high around his ears. None too gently, he pulled Steve down to sit with him on the ground. "Couldn't you keep your mouth shut? He would've moved on if you didn't say anything!"

"He was rude to you!" Steve insisted. "And what'd he mean, I can get your arm? Can I?" He thought of Bucky here, of the almost full year Steve had spent coming to the Bright Place. Could he have been helping Bucky the entire time? "Buck, if I can help, you gotta let me."

"No," Bucky said vehemently. "Erskine ain't even sure it's in there, and it's too dangerous for you anyway."

"Then come with me!"

"No!"

"Bucky, come on, if I can get your arm, then you can come home with me, right?"

"And if you get eaten, or snatched up, or get your own arm taken away, I guess it'll have been worth the trip, huh?" Bucky fumed. "You can't listen to anything Cheap Jack says, Steve. He likes causing trouble. You know that lantern he has?" Steve nodded. "He uses it to lead ghosts places, sometimes the Sallow Place, sometimes the Otherworld, wherever he wants. And they follow along like moths."

Steve thought of the little ghost child in the woods, imagined it trailing, lost, after a cruel light swinging in the dark. Hot anger pricked inside him again. "What's he do to them?" he demanded.

Bucky looked uncomfortable. "Nothing bad. He just lets 'em go. But it's still... it's like a game for him, do you see? Everything's a game for him. You live long enough, you get bored. And he's been around this place for more than a thousand years. He's very, very bored, Steve. He's just trying to trick you."

Something fuzzy butted against Steve's shins - Hackel. She looked up at him, green eyes accusing, as if asking him what he'd done to upset Bucky. Steve scratched at her ears, and thought. "Are you going to make her take me home?" he asked.

"I can't make her do anything," Bucky frowned. "She's a cat." He sighed gustily. "I don't want you to go yet," he said, and Steve ignored the thrill he felt at the admission, "and Jack's gone, so there's no point now anyway. You can stay," he decided, "but I want you to promise that you won't go into the Sallow Place."

Once again, the field went still; the hum of insects quietened; even Hackel didn't move an inch. Promises were important here, Steve had learned. Debts were guarantees. The broonies under the house were harmless so long as you fed them. The vedi kept watch over the hill because of a long-ago promise to Erskine. Even Hackel continued to bring Steve to the Bright Place, as a favor for his protection. In the Otherworld, it seemed, one good turn created another, and a bad turn brought you more of the same. A deal was a deal, and the people who lived here couldn't break one.

But Steve didn't live here.

Bucky looked at Steve seriously, and Steve looked back, knowing he was going to deceive him as he said, "I don't want to go anywhere that's gonna make you mad at me, and if it's really so bad there, then it's not someplace I need to be. But, Erskine is working on bringing your arm back, right?"

Frowning, Bucky nodded. "That wasn't a promise," he said.

"I promise," Steve thought quickly how to say it without lying directly, "that I won't go following Cheap Jack into the Sallow Place like a dumb moth, okay?" He rolled his eyes. "I don't want to get eaten by a vampire, Bucky." That seemed to have done it - the cornstalks relaxed again, bees picked back up their humming, and Bucky smiled for the first time since Jack had shown up.

"I'll hold you to that," he promised in turn. "Can't have anything happening to the best artist in Brooklyn."

"Aw, Buck..."

"Come on, draw me something else."

Steve obliged, crouching under the platform to fetch his sketchbook from where he’d thrown it aside. He looked over his shoulder, but Bucky was talking to Hackel and looking suspiciously over the field, and he wasn't watching Steve.

Hurrying, he grabbed his sketchbook and flipped to the very last page. "READ ABOUT SALLOW PLACE. PROTECTION AGAINST FAIRIES." he wrote to himself. He wouldn't remember why, and he might not find much, but it would be better than nothing.

It'd been a while since he'd broken a rule, anyway.


	4. The Hunger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween! Here's a more spooky chapter for you to enjoy~

It happened during Steve's visit in October.

He woke at 3:00am to scratching at his window, and the instant he looked at the large cat outside, he went from knowing himself as Steve Rogers, just a kid from Brooklyn, to remembering that he was Steve Rogers, who had a friend trapped in the Otherworld.

And he remembered that he had a plan.

Usually, remembering the Otherworld was a bit like waking up to get ready for school, only to realize it was actually Saturday. A rush of relief and triumph - and a pinch of exasperation at having forgotten it all in the first place.

This month, however, Steve woke up, scowled at the loud alley cat, and was flooded with recognition, guilt, and then determination. "Hey, Hacks," he whispered as he opened the window. She slid through the gap easy as a shadow, despite her large size, and chirped at him expectantly. "Give me just a sec, okay?"

Hackel was his first obstacle. The first few times he’d gone through with her to the Otherworld, she’d stuck to him like a burr, herding him away anytime he strayed too far from Bucky’s post, or yowling whenever the two boys would roughhouse beyond her liking. Steve assumed it was because she was taking him through without Erskine’s knowledge. Without the Watcher Witch keeping an eye on things, Hackel assumed the role as guard.

Lately however, she’d been more relaxed. Steve hadn’t shown any inkling of straying past Bucky’s side - and truly, he’d never wanted to up until now.

The trick would be to distract her long enough for Steve to slip through the Sallows. Once he was there, he’d need to hurry. He had no idea if Hackel would follow him through, and he didn’t want to put her in any danger.

Slowly, he opened his bedroom door. His mother was still on shift at the hospital, but walls in this apartment were thin, and their neighbors had kicked up a fuss for less than loud noises in the middle of the night. Quickly and quietly as he could, Steve grabbed his backpack from the kitchen table and took stock of the kitchen. The cupboards held a bit of what he remembered reading about during the month. He packed away what supplies he could: two jars of tomato sauce, several salt packets, a garlic clove, and some herbs from the cupboard that he couldn't identify but hoped would do him good. A rush of religious superstition swept over him, and he crept to the living room to pull his baptism rosary from the side table before returning to the kitchen to rifle through the fridge for something to distract Hackel.

To his relief, his mother had put away a container of leftover chicken. Steve shoved several pieces into his backpack, along with some sandwiches. He didn't bother wrapping them. He wanted Hackel to be able to smell them, after all.

True to form, Hackel perked up when he came back into the room, and she sniffed at his backpack with great interest. Guilt twinged in his chest again. He'd thought, at first, of slipping her some of his drowsy medicine, perhaps wrapped in a slice of turkey, but he just couldn't do it. It wouldn't be right. As much as he wanted to help Bucky, he couldn't bear hurting Hackel in the process.

The chicken was Plan B, and he'd just have to take whatever headstart it could give him.

Hackel butted against his backpack pointedly. "You can have some," he whispered. "But you gotta wait until we get there, okay?" She turned and leaped out the window. By the time Steve caught up, she was pacing on the sidewalk impatiently. You could always trust a cat for a treat, it seemed. Steve breathed deeply, adjusted his grip on the backpack. "Let's go!"

The promise of chicken kept Hackel from playing games. She led Steve around a light post three times, and on the third turn, in the space between blinking, Steve opened his eyes in the Bright Place; specifically in the cornfield, rather than the garden. Perfect.

Several yards away, Steve could see Bucky's form, motionless on his post above the yellow stalks, and just beyond him, the nothingness of the Sallows. His hands shook, and he took several deep breaths before digging into his backpack for Hackel's treat.

"Here you go. I'll be at Bucky's post when you're done." Rather than allowing her to take it from his hand, he tossed a chicken leg a few feet away, and the second one even further. The third piece he threw casually to the side, and grinned at her. Hackel glared back, unimpressed, looked to the short distance where Bucky stood, and trotted over to pick apart the chicken.

Time to go. He quick-stepped to Bucky’s post, and glanced up to make sure Bucky wasn’t awake yet. It was always odd to see his friend when Bucky hadn't woken up yet. For all appearances, Bucky wasn't there at all, just a remarkably detailed scarecrow - but a scarecrow nonetheless. His skin was waxy and still, with stitches up and down his face. Straw poked out from his ears and from his empty sleeve. Even his eyes, cool and blue, were dim and unfocused as marbles. There was nothing to show of Steve's friend save for a creased paperback sticking out from the pocket of the scarecrow's trousers.

Rather than settling in his usual way at the base of Bucky's post to wait, Steve kept walking, past the post, past the thinning stalks of corn, to the edge of the Bright Place. As he walked, he went over the supplies from the kitchen as well as those he'd packed beforehand: a flashlight, a candle and matches in case the flashlight didn't work, and an old iron nail he'd found in the alley by his school.

More likely than not, none of it would do him any good, but he felt better having at least the illusion of preparedness.

Finally, he was there. The field stopped; the Bright Place stopped; everything was gone, with only a high wall of black stretching up and out further than Steve could see. It was like looking off the edge of the world, like looking into space without stars - just an eerie, watching black.

First things first, he brought out his flashlight and shone it directly in front of him, but the darkness simply swallowed the light up. Not to be deterred, Steve reached out his hand. It disappeared from sight the moment it crossed over the barrier. He wiggled his fingers - there was no discernible difference in the air on the other side. Steve took this as a good sign and, without giving himself the chance to think his way out, stepped through.

At best, Steve had been prepared for complete darkness, and his Catholic upbringing had him imagining flames and demons, at worst. He had been prepared to lose his way, to wander how he thought Bucky would have wandered as a lost twelve year old.

What he hadn't expected, was for the Sallow Place to look so familiar. Instead of black or burning, there was light - dim, but there all the same - and through it he could see the very cornfield he'd just left behind, a figure leaning on a pole, a hill just beyond the field with a tall tree guarding a cottage on top. It was the Bright Place, but reversed, like a photo negative: the corn field was withered and pale instead of gold, the hill a blackish blue, the tree barren. Steve looked up, and rather than a reaching blue, the sky was as flat and gray as the lid of a closed box.

A shudder ran down his spine. The Sallows was utterly silent, empty of the chimes, rustling, and the distant hum of magic in the Bright Place. Steve's breathing felt loud, and it seemed as if his very heartbeats were sending waves through the still air. He felt strangely desolate, and watched, all at once.

Suddenly, a wisp of gold curled in the corner of his eye. Then another, and another, and it was coming _from_ him. Steve looked at himself in amazement. He was glowing, light rising off his skin like a vapor. Steve waved his hand over his arm, astonished - but the light continued rising off of him unbothered. Was this what Erskine and Cheap Jack had meant, by him having a light?

Unlike Steve, the flashlight gave off no illumination, and it was unnecessary since Steve could see just fine, so Steve stowed it back in his bag - the zipper a harsh sound against the quiet - and walked into the pale field, a new plan fresh in his mind.

If the Sallows were a mirror of the Bright Place - and if Steve had stumbled into the Bright Place through the door to Erskine's garden - then it stood to reason that if Bucky had come through a door here, then that door would be at the top of the black-blue hill. He tried not to think of what else could be in that cottage, squared his shoulders, and marched into the field.

The corn stalks were thin and strangled, an ashen white, as if a fire had passed through the field. They didn’t make a sound as Steve pushed through, though his motions moved through them like ripples in a spider web.

Steve walked, and walked, and walked. Still the field stretched on, far beyond the point where he should have reached the hill, or even the figure in the middle of the field. He wondered what the Sallow Place's scarecrow was like. Was it a person, like Bucky, stuck as well? He kept going, quick steps crunching before the sound disappeared entirely, like the air had gobbled it up. The silence was oppressive. It made Steve want to shout, his heartbeat loud in his ears. _Still_ he walked, feet aching, chest heavy, and the white stalks never ended.

"Lost?" someone croaked, and only his stubborn nerve kept Steve from flinching. Without an echo, Steve couldn't tell where the voice had come from. He looked around, then up, then finally at the ground, and between the white corn husks peeked a crow painted entirely black. Steve couldn't even see the join of its feathers, or where its eyes began, as if it were simply a shadow, a void in the shape of a bird. "Lost?" it cracked again and tilted its head in a way that reminded Steve of Cheap Jack.

"No," Steve said defensively, and the crow parroted back in Steve's own voice:

"No."

Steve reconsidered. "Hey," he said, "you, uh, you like ham?" The crow stared blankly back at him, but it didn't fly away when Steve opened his bag. Steve pulled a sandwich out, tore off a piece, and tossed it down.

In a flash, the crow snatched it up and stared back at Steve. "Ham," it said in Steve's voice. Then, in it's own croaking tone: "Lost?"

"I ain't lost," Steve told it. "But listen, I'll give you another piece of ham if you can tell me - have you seen a, um, an arm, here?" It dawned on him: "It'd be glowing, kinda, like mine." He held out his arm for the crow to see the light rising from his fingers. He couldn't tell if the crow was looking at the light or not, but he figured it was fairly noticeable. "Take me to it, and I'll give you the whole sandwich."

"Help?" the crow croaked in a different voice, this one tight and scared. It bit at Steve's ankle. Steve kicked out, the pain a stab of heat, but the crow had fluttered away by a few yards. It stood there, watching. "Help?"

"Bastard," Steve muttered, rubbing his ankle against his calf. The bite throbbed. He looked around for the hill, but the tall stalks blocked his view.

Sharp pain flared again in his ankle. " _Ow_!" he hissed. "What?!"

" _What_ ," the crow repeated in his voice, hopping back again. It watched Steve for a moment, then hopped back further. Steve looked at it blankly; it cocked its head. "Bastard," it said in Steve's voice, shadowy feathers ruffling, and Steve understood.

"You want me to follow? Why didn't you _say_."

"Follow!" The crow took off with a noiseless flap of its wings, and Steve hurried to catch it up. Perhaps the crow only learned words once it heard them? Steve thought of the two words it had already known, "lost" and "help," and picked up his pace.

With the crow leading, the field finally seemed willing to let Steve go. A tight pressure he hadn't realized he was carrying released in his chest the thinner the field grew. By the time he reached the base of the hill, he was panting half in exertion and half in relief. Unsympathetic, the crow flew on up to the top. Steve felt a thrill of satisfaction that he'd been right. Bucky's arm _was_ at the top of the hill.

He didn't know what else was up there with it, though, and he crept up more slowly, aware of every step he took outside the shelter of the cornfield. The crow was waiting for him at the top, perched on the railings of the cottage, which looked exactly like Erskine's, but drained of color. A tree stood sentinel, like the vedi, but this one was skeletal and cold. Steve felt that if it _had_ been like the vedi, it was now very much a dead thing.

The biggest difference was the garden - that is, that instead of tomatoes and cabbages and all manner of green things growing, here, there was a graveyard.

Hastily dug, mismatched patches of rounded earth covered the yard. Some had headstones, but with no names that Steve could see - only strange markings, like spells, scratched across them. Others were covered in heavy stones, some with spikes buried in the earth. There were at least six, by Steve’s count.

“Follow,” the crow said again, cracked voice a whisper. It hopped like a drifting shadow on a patch of bare soil, paused deliberately, then hopped forward to another patch. “Follow.”

Steve may have been many things, but he was not an idiot. He remembered the odd ways one had to walk sometimes, in the Bright Place, to get into certain spots without trouble. He matched his steps to wherever the crow paused, careful where he put his feet. The crow took him in a strange path, forward, then around, then in zigging zags. Steve was grateful, at least, that the path kept him away from the burial mounds. He didn’t like to look at them. Sometimes, in the corner of his eye, they seemed to shift, as if the earth over them were a blanket, rather than rocks, covering a person shifting in their sleep.

Closest to the house was a mound covered in many small rocks. Around it grew grass, withered and brown. Around this the crow moved carefully, and then flew all at once to the windowsill. Steve followed, but before he could step up the steps of the house, the crow made a low grating noise and stuck out its right foot. Steve shifted his weight, put down his left foot, and stepped up the stairs with his right foot leading. After that, the crow seemed to not pay him any attention, so he hurried over to where it perched on the windowsill. He looked in.

The few times Steve had gotten a look, back in the Bright Place, Erskine’s home had been a mess of growing plants and pots that steamed and bubbled, of cobwebs and birds and several unwashed plates and cups, of misshapen cupboards filled with spellbooks and pies.

The Sallow house, in stark contrast, was a colorless room, bare as a prison cell, with only two things in it to draw the eye: a broomstick leaning upside down against the front door, and a small blackened cook stove with an oven door. It was the latter that drew Steve’s attention, for from it floated a green-gold light in puffs like mist.

“Light,” his own voice said from behind him. He jerked, jammed his elbow against the windowsill, and swore.

He looked over his shoulder at the crow, which perched a far distance away on a hanging dead tree branch. It tilted its head and rasped again in Steve’s voice: “Ham.”

“Ham, right.” Steve dug into his backpack. “Deal’s a deal. Thank you.” He held out the sandwich, the last of the bunch he’d brought with him, unwilling to walk back out into the graveyard. The crow flew forward, snatched the sandwich from Steve’s hand, and did not stop as it flew off back over the field.

Steve didn’t give himself time to hesitate. He opened the window, and when he looked in, the air felt tense, bated, as if someone inside the room had been speaking just before he’d come in - though Steve saw nobody, and had heard nobody through the window besides. He quickly shimmied inside and shut the window fast.

Almost at once, there came from outside a clattering _thock thock thock_ like the sound of many shifting rocks. Steve ignored it and hurried to the light coming from the stove-oven. Bracing himself for the sure-to-be disturbing sight of a solitary arm, Steve threw open the oven door, but there was nothing.

The light, it seemed, was coming from _behind_ the stove. Steve followed the wisps to the back, and there was a door, where one might have put logs or coal. A simple pin held the latch shut, and Steve’s hands shook as he fumbled it open.

There was no fire, and no arm. Instead, on a platform of stone, there sat a person, small as a mouse, and surrounded by cobwebs. A girl, who looked around Steve’s age despite her size, with deep red hair and glass-green eyes. Steve would have thought her a doll if her hands weren’t moving along a bundle of spiderwebs, which wove around her ankles like a chain and attached to the side of the stove. Wisps of green-and-gold light rose from her like steam, though it was faint and fast to die in the gray of the room.

She looked up as soon as Steve threw open the door. “A new boy,” she remarked, mild, as if observing a slight change in weather. “Zola found you quickly. Were you trapped, or taken?” Her green eyes sparked as she looked more closely at Steve. “Taken,” she decided. “You are very bright. No wonder he wants to use you.”

“You’re not Bucky’s arm,” Steve said, numb with disappointment and slow with it.

The tiny girl cocked an eyebrow. “Bright, but not _bright_ , are you? He won’t be using your _head_ , if that’s the case.” Then she dismissed Steve entirely and returned her attention to the spider’s silk between her hands.

Outside the window, rocks clattered, and a low moan raised the hairs on Steve’s neck. “What?”

“That’s the famine woman,” the girl said calmly, weaving another loop. “You must have woken her up. You can hide with me,” she offered, “but in exchange, you must let me eat your eyes.”

“What? No!” Steve’s mind raced. “Thanks, but I’m not staying.”

Quick as a whip, she looked up. “You’re not staying?”

“No, I have to - “

“You aren’t trapped?” She put her spinning aside, stood, and walked to the edge of the blackened stone. She craned to look out the vents - unwilling, it seemed, to walk on the iron oven itself. Whatever she saw, the light seeping from her suddenly flared. “Zola isn’t here.” She looked at Steve again, assessing. “He didn’t bring you. You’re _leaving_?”

“Soon, if I can find - “

“Take me with you,” she interrupted, “and I will let you eat _my_ eyes.”

“What?!” As if to make good on her word, the girl pulled out a sharp pin from the stitching of her dress. Steve’s stomach lurched. “No! I don’t want your eyes! I’m looking for - "

“An arm, you said.”  She strode forward to the very edge of the blackened stone and glared up at Steve. She was barely 15 centimeters tall. “I will give you my arm if you will take me out of this house.”

“What, are _you_ trapped here?” Then, he realized: “You’re - you’ve got - a light, like me. Are you a _human_?”

“Barely.”

“You’re so small!”

“ _Barely_ , I said. We have to go. It won’t be long before Zola hears that the famine woman is awake. Do we have a deal?”

A deal? Steve blinked. “No, I...I don’t want your arm.”

The girl stood very still, but with the kind of stillness of a person tensed and about to run. Steve felt as if she might launch herself at him at any moment. “ _Both_ arms, then,” she said.

“No! I want _an_ arm. A specific arm! My friend’s arm. He’s stuck without it. I thought it would be here, but -”

“The lich has taken many arms,” she said, jaw clenched and eyes faraway, as if remembering something unpleasant, “but there’s only been one boy that survived and got away. The brown-haired boy. The one with the blue eyes.”

“Yes!”

“I know his story. You won’t find his arm here, and if you don’t hurry, the lich will be back, and he’ll trap you here as well.”

Was that his only option? To leave? Without finding Bucky’s arm? But the noises outside the window were growing louder, and he knew Hackel would have noticed by now that Steve was missing.

“What do we do?” he asked the small girl, who was gathering what little things she had about her person.

“You’ll have to break the chain,” she said matter-of-factly, “and carry me out. I can’t touch the iron or I’ll die.”

Steve hesitated. What if this girl was really a monster, and this chain was all that stood between her and making Steve a meal? But, he reasoned, she was human (barely), and she knew about Bucky’s arm. She was the only lead he had, at this point. He reached into the oven and paused, hand around the thread. “Promise me, first.”

She looked at him, assessing. Steve felt as if she could tell things about him, just by looking. Whatever she saw, she nodded. “I promise to help you help your friend,” she said, “if you promise to get me safely out of this place.”

The moaning outside grew louder. Steve wanted to argue that “help” was too vague for a true deal - she could easily move a twig out of Steve’s path, and count that as helping - but he needed to cut his losses, and fast.

“Promise me you’ll do the most you can to help me find his arm, so he can get home, and I’ll make sure you get out of here with me as safely as I can manage.”

The girl glared at him, but she nodded. “I promise.”

The thread split easily under his hands, and the girl scrambled up his arm quick as a spider. Steve could barely feel where she hung from his sleeve. “What’s your name?” he asked.

She looked at him like he was particularly stupid. “You never speak your real name in the Sallow Place.” The unspoken _you dunce_ hung loudly in the air. “You can call me Natasha.” 

“Uhm. I guess you can call me...Grant?” Steve settled on his middle name, and then winced. Maybe you weren’t supposed to give any part of your real name, here?

She rolled her eyes. Steve had the impression she wouldn’t be calling him much else besides “idiot.” “We have to leave now. Which way did you come in?”

“The window.”

“That’s the way out, then. Left foot first, to leave.”

Steve hurried to the window, wrenched it open, and was halfway through before he froze in horror.

The grave closest to the house was overturned, and several feet away stood a raggedly clothed woman, emaciated and covered in blood and dirt. Her yellow eyes fixed on Steve and Natasha, and she groaned with pain before lurching forward.

“Run!” Natasha whispered. "Don't let her touch you. Run!" 

Steve ran, Natasha cupped in his hands. He paid no mind to the path the crow had shown him, and the ground lurched beneath his feet as he shot through the yard. “Go left!” directed Natasha, and no sooner had Steve obeyed than the great trunk of the dead tree slammed into the ground where he had been. A sharp branch clipped his shoulder, and he fell, curled over Natasha to protect her from the fall, but he had no time to collect himself. “Go!”

The woman was following them, keeping pace, her face a rictus of suffering and desperation, arms held out as if in supplication. Steve scrambled to his feet and bolted down the hill.

As he ran, he could see the scarecrow figure drop from its post into the field.

The corn stalks shivered noiselessly as Steve crashed through. He couldn’t see anything beyond their stalks, couldn’t hear anything past the beating of his own heart and the crunch of the ground beneath his boots as he ran.

He knew, though that the wailing woman followed close behind. He could hear, as if very far away, her cries of despair. “What is that?” he asked Natasha, pushing through the field. “A banshee?”

He heard a rustle, cut off fast, and the harsh voice of the crow - “Help!”

“I already said, she’s the famine woman.” Natasha was eerily calm from her place in Steve’s hands. “Don’t let her touch you, or you’ll be cursed, same as her. Keep going. I can get us through the field.” Natasha plucked a hair from her head and wove it to a small ring. “Swallow this.”

“That’s disgusting,” Steve panted. The field was the same unending trap as before. Perhaps you couldn’t get through, without a guide? He took the ring.  “What’ll it do?”

“Keeps us tied. I’m Other enough to get us through the field. Give me a hair of yours.” The moaning grew to a wail, desperate, as if the woman were dying. Steve couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and he couldn’t risk slowing down. He ripped a strand of hair from his head and handed it to Natasha, who ate it instantly.

Trying not to think about what he was doing, Steve gulped the small ring down in a single swallow. If he expected to feel a thrum of magic, he was disappointed, but Natasha seemed satisfied. A pressure he hadn’t been aware of lifted from his chest, and all at once the field began to thin, and he could see a rising wall of pure, painful light. “We’re almost there!” he told Natasha.

All at once, a clammy hand shot out from the left, grabbed at Steve’s neck. Natasha called a warning. He ducked, but Steve felt across his nape the drag of a nail, and all at once he was struck with a hunger, more fierce than anything he’d ever felt. It stopped him in his tracks, rattled from his bones, ached his teeth - he’d die if he didn’t get something to eat.

The famine woman’s wailing stopped.

“N-Natasha,” Steve gasped, stumbling back towards the corn field. It was wrong, he knew. They had to get out. But he couldn’t control himself - the hunger was overpowering, maddening. He couldn’t think over the aching emptiness in his stomach. He would tear the corn stalks from the ground, he thought. A belly full of dead grass was better than the yawning hunger ripping through him. He would shatter apart from it.

Against his will, his feet turned back to the cornfield, and the famine woman followed him, not trying to reach him now, but watching.

Distantly, he registered Natasha crawling up, peering at his neck. “She’s got you,” she said. A sharp pain cut through the haze of hunger. Natasha had pricked his cheek with her needle. “You can’t eat anything from here, or you’ll never be able to leave. I’ll sew your mouth shut if I have to. There’s food in the Bright Place. Go there.”

Steve understood, but it took a monumental strength of will to turn away from the corn field. He wanted to tear at the dirt, the grass, the dead branches of the trees overhead. He was ravenous. He’d never been this hungry in his life. It was eating at him. It was eating him alive.

He moaned with pain, and the famine woman watched him carefully.

The wall of the Bright Place was so close. He pitched forward, thinking of the food in Erskine’s house, thinking of Bucky, how angry he’d be at Steve, how certain he’d be of how to help him. Steve’s legs grew weaker with every step. He could see his arms growing thin, the light rising from him a sickly yellow. Someone was groaning, the noise echoing through the cavern of his empty stomach, and he realized it was him. He fell to his knees paces before the bright wall.

“Get up,” Natasha urged. “Keep going. We’re there! You need to bring us through.”

Her words slipped over his mind. He scrabbled through his bag, fist closing around the bunches of herbs he’d brought from his mother’s pantry. He shoved them into his mouth desperately, uncaring how they scratched his gums and scraped his throat. The clove of garlic came next soon as he found it. It burst, stringent and foul, between his teeth, but he couldn’t chew it fast enough. His stomach cramped, and his groans grew to a frantic cry.

The famine woman knelt next to him, nothing more than skin stretched over bone. She held out her hands to Steve.

The final bit of food in his bag, the jars of tomato sauce, he opened shakily, salivating. The lid on one of the jars popped, and he poured the sauce into his mouth. Across from him, the famine woman sighed.

It did no good. He may as well try to put out a fire with a droplet of water. He could feel what little fat his body had in stores churn away, his innards quailing. He had to eat. He _had_ to.

Outside the ravenous hunger, a small part of Steve’s mind realized, as he fumbled open the final jar, that he would die here, wasted away to nothing in moments. He could hear Natasha calling to him, felt her needle pricking at his hands, before it was gone, her weight disappeared. He saw the famine woman, her yellow-limned eyes compassionate, now, her grasping hands begging as Steve raised the jar to his lips. Dimly, Steve thought of how miserable it must be, to be a creature of starvation. To feel this pain but have nothing to eat in this barren, awful place.

She reached for Steve entreatingly.

And that part of Steve Rogers, that part which stood up no matter how many times he got knocked down, which broke the rules if it helped another person, that couldn’t ignore a person asking for help - wrenched his hand away from pouring the sauce into his mouth, and shoved the half-ful jar into the famine woman’s hands instead.

At once, the pain stopped. The hunger faded, in its place a bone-deep weariness. Steve gasped with relief, pitched forward, and knew no more.

* * *

At 3:13am in Brooklyn, New York, Steven Grant Rogers awoke in his small apartment bed. His body ached. His head pounded. A foul taste of garlic and grass hung in his mouth.

But he was alive, he marveled. He was _home_. And, most shocking of them all, he realized - 

\- He _remembered_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had hoped to have this story finished by Halloween, but work called me out of town and flubbed my writing schedule - so this story will stretch into November, instead! 
> 
> If you're interested to know: The Famine Woman is based on an Irish creature of famine, the Fear Gorta, which would curse you with hunger if you ignored it, or give you good fortune in response to charity.

**Author's Note:**

> An Autumn Story - The Sallow Place will be updated every week through October. I hope you enjoy!


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